Originally Posted by
BVRAAM
Thanks again. Colonel Tillman also has several passages of narrative in
The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett Graff (2019).
In it he says he took AF1 up to FL450 and later Mach .94. Isn't this a little more that the civilian limits for a B-742?
And I mentioned what I believe to be a few AF1 urban legends repeated in the media. For example, the claim that the President and Vice President never ride on the same aircraft.
Here's another one that I've run across claiming that AF1 has some special power boost or something. Anybody know what this is if it really exists?
From the 2017 Graff article linked above:
The special presidential evacuation procedures begin with the primary Air Force One planes themselves: On September 11, 2001, as President George W. Bush raced into the air following his school appearance in Sarasota, Florida, the crew activated a secret, classified capability aboard the 747 that speeds emergency launches, rocketing the plane into the sky at what seemed to passengers and observers like an impossibly steep pitch to minimize its exposure to any lurking surface-to-air missiles. “There are only two 747s in the world that can take off like that,” one of the flight stewards said that day, leaning over to a congressman who was aboard. “And they’re both called Air Force One.”
Is it some best angle flap setting that a standard B-742 doesn't have? Or a war emergency power reserve setting on the CF-6 motors?